


Who let the dogs out

by madmogs



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Activism, Activist Stiles Stilinski, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Gen, Werewolves as Slaves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 06:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20925992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madmogs/pseuds/madmogs
Summary: When Stiles was a kid, he wanted to be a cop.His logic went something like this: here is a job where you get to find out the things they don’t want you to know and people actually like you for it. And you get paid.Yeah, kid Stiles was an idiot.------------------In which the law sucks, and Stiles and Laura try to make it better.





	Who let the dogs out

**Author's Note:**

> This fic ends a six-year dry spell where fic writing is concerned, so please bear with any rustiness caused by lingering 'how do I words?' Also with any unexpected Britishness in the bagging area.

When Stiles was a kid, he wanted to be a cop.

His logic went something like this: here is a job where you get to find out the things they don’t want you to know and people actually like you for it. And you get paid.

Yeah, kid Stiles was an idiot. That dream was terminated with extreme prejudice six days after Scott was bitten by a rogue alpha werewolf, and roughly ninety minutes after Stiles’s dad found out.

The six days were filled with increasingly horrified and frantic research into the Werewolf Domestication Program. The ninety minutes were filled with his father’s “I’m sorry kid, but cops don’t get to choose which laws we enforce” speech and his own futile rebuttals and (in retrospect) half-baked escape plans for Scott.

What really rankled was, he wasn’t even angry at the injustice like Stiles. He was apologetic. For some reason that was the one last nail in the coffin of Stiles’s childhood dreams.

(Technically the last nail was the first time he was arrested and charged at a Werewolf Rights demonstration. But Stiles is measuring that one by when _he_ decided “not a cop”, not by when the law started agreeing with him.)

But the law can suck on that, as far as Stiles is concerned, because, hey, it’s not the law any more! Which wasn’t as simple as that and even after the repeal they had to wait for something something case law blah blah habeas corpus (and some truly shady moves whereby the werewolf owners get compensated for loss of property and income and the werewolves don’t get compensated for shit, don’t get Stiles started). But anyway.

“Can you hear anything?” he asks Laura. She’s staring stonily at the front gate of the Redding Domestication Center like she can force the gates to open with her magical Alpha Powers, or whatever. It hasn’t worked yet, but hey, can’t do any harm to keep trying.

Laura huffs. “You mean over the protesters, and the counter-protesters, and the counter-counter-protesters and that one douchebag from KRCR news who’s trying to make ‘we’re still waiting’ sound exciting?”

“Yeah, last I checked, you’re supposed to be the one with super senses.” Activist circles used to pretend aggressively that everyone involved was human. Laura was one of the best at passing but damn was it nice not to have to do that any more.

“Yeah, well, my super senses have a headache. I can tell you in excruciating detail what the pearl-clutchers over there are saying about us, but I can’t hear shit about what’s going on in Argent Manor."

Stiles eyes the pro-domestication protesters on the other side of the street. They don’t have much to say for themselves if the banners have anything to go by, beyond some biblical quotes about man having dominion over every creature, and quite a lot about 'sacrificing our children’s safety’. One so-called wit has gone with 'who let the dogs out’, but any were savvy enough to evade the Domestication Program for any period has way too much control to react to the D-slur. "Yeah, I don’t think I need to know.” If someone's going to cause trouble, it's not going to be that lot. 

“You need something to distract yourself with, don’t you?” Laura says, crinkling her nose, like she hasn’t seen how damaged the weres released from other centers have been. Like her brother wasn’t in there six years longer than Scott has been. Everyone who knows someone inside is secretly shitting themselves. Stiles isn’t special for that.

“And … you don’t?”

She raises an eyebrow. “You’re my distraction. Obviously.” 

Stupid hot asshole werewolves. Stiles always knew his type was smart, sarcastic and scary, and he may possibly have a problem with … actually quite a lot of the less human activists. His late teens were like an all-you-can-eat buffet of really confusing boners some days. And ... that's a mental image he really wishes he hadn't just had.

Laura gives him _that_ look, the 'your chemosignals are weirding me out' one. “Yeah … I have no idea why that set you off, but that really wasn’t the distraction I had in mind.”

“You know I’m not actually into you, right? And I would super, super not risk pissing Braeden off.”

“Well, that’s good,” Braeden says directly behind his left ear, and Laura laughs with her eyes only when he leaps like a foot in the air.

“Steady,” she says, and catches his flailing arm in one hand before it can hit the guy behind him. So he feels, rather than sees, her still, a fraction of a second before a ripple of awareness spreads through the weres in the small crowd of next-of-kin, before spreading to the humans.

“They’re coming,” she says, her voice raw. “They’re coming now."

Fuck, Stiles thinks. Scott.

He’s worked five years for this. He’s not prepared for this. How is he not ready? How is that even possible?

"There’s so m-many of them,” Laura says, awed and lost, staring at the gates of the Domestication Center. “And they’re coming home.”


End file.
